All About Words

The PEEP Room(Part 3):

I have come back again. Last time I heard the scream but was summoned back. I am here again, twelve years hence. I didn’t have courage then, nor do I have it now. But I have the curiosity to see the truth, or at least, glimpses of truth. I look at the door. It is still locked, and I don’t have the key to it. I look around and start walking. I am perplexed at the majestic wonder. How can something hide so much inside? I walk towards the back of the house and find a window. It is deep set and as beautifully decorated as the door itself. It is high and well beyond my sight to look inside it. I can only see if something comes on the windowpane. The windowpane itself is tainted with a crack and is covered with cobwebs. Everything is smoky beyond. I find myself making illusions of great figures from history, from regions of darkness.

I see someone approaching the pane, a feminine figure having long locks around the shoulder and a slender hand with which it clears the window gently. It looks down on me with the tenderest eyes I have ever seen. They seem moist, somewhat swollen from years of crying and longing. I remember the day twelve years ago; when I had heard the flinching scream. Her face looks familiar. She reminds me of someone. Her face unnerves me and haunts me.

Suddenly, I remember. It is my face. She has my eyes, my lips, my arms and my locks. She had my voice that day. She is locked inside. I am locked outside. And the irony: I don’t have the key. I am a spectator, bound to speculate and remain lost and locked, to pursue my wanderings in further darkness, to find more of myself and to lose more of myself, in the “peep” room.